The US Dept of Education claims that they
are concerned about poverty, but think that the solution is to improve
teaching: With better teaching, we will have more learning (that is, higher
test scores), and this will improve the economy. Graduates will step into high
paying technical jobs and start new companies.

But more education will only lead to a
job if jobs are available. Studies show that the STEM crisis is really a
surplus of STEM-trained workers, not a shortage.

Poverty means inadquate diet and health
care and little access to books, among other things. All of these have a
powerful negative impact on school performance.

.

We are always interested in improving
teaching, but the best teaching in the world will have little effect when
students are hungry, are in poor health, and have low literacy development
because of a lack of access to books.

Studies have failed to find a correlation
between improved test scores and subsequent economic progress and have also
shown that job loss results in depressed school performance. In one study, job
losses affecting 3.4% of state's population predict a decline of 10 points on
standardized math tests.. Their results also indicated that "downturns
affect all students, not just students who experience parental job loss."

This data strongly suggests that reducing
poverty helps raise educational levels, not the other way around. It means that
Martin Luther King was right:

"We are likely to find that the
problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of
poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”(Martin Luther King, 1967, Final Words of
Advice).

Footnote: There is, in addition, no
evidence that the "rigorous" standards/nonstop testing formula has
ever improved student achievement.

Negative effect
of povery on school achievement: Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential:Out-of-School Factors and School
Success.Boulder and Tempe: Education
and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved
[date] from http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential;
Krashen, S., Lee, SY, and McQuillan, J. 2012. Is The Library Important?
Multivariate Studies at the National and International Level Journal of
Language and Literacy Education: 8(1). http://jolle.coe.uga.edu/